Track­ing sys­tem to be in­tro­duced to know pil­grims’ lo­ca­tion

ISLAMABAD—The Min­istry of Re­li­gious Af­fairs and In­ter­faith Har­mony will in­tro­duce a spe­cial track­ing sys­tem to know ex­act lo­ca­tion of the pil­grims dur­ing Hajj. Ac­cord­ing to a min­istry of­fi­cial, a de­vice would be fixed in the wrist watches, bracelets or rings of Hu­j­jaj (pil­grims) to help mon­i­tor­ing team to keep their track.

He said the track­ing sys­tem with the help of Global Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) and satel­lite sys­tem would en­sure timely help of a pil­grim in trou­ble and trace the miss­ing ones. The sys­tem would also be at­tached with mo­bile phones of the pil­grims, which would be help­ful in as­cer­tain­ing their lo­ca­tion, he added.

The of­fi­cial said the track­ing sys­tem would help the pil­grims lo­cate exit points in case of any emer­gency or un­to­ward in­ci­dent dur­ing Hajj.

A group leader could check the lo­ca­tion of his group’s mem­bers, be­sides send­ing mes­sages to them. The bat­tery of the track­ing sys­tem would be enough for four to five days af­ter charg­ing for only five min­utes. The com­plete record of stay in Saudi Ara­bia would be saved in the track­ing sys­tem, the of­fi­cial said.

He said the track­ing sys­tem would be avail­able for all the Hu­j­jaj in 2017. He said the sys­tem would help a pil­grim mon­i­tor body tem­per­a­ture and heart­beat, be­sides cur­rent lo­ca­tion and the routes, where he or she wanted to move dur­ing Hajj days. Each Haji would know about suf­fo­ca­tion places.

Mean­while, the min­istry has been plan­ning to utilise Hu­j­jaj Com­pen­sa­tion Fund (HCF) to com­pen­sate Hajj Group Or­gan­is­ers’ (HGOs) fraud vic­tims. Ac­cord­ing to Hajj Pol­icy 2016, the HCF would also be utilised for up-gra­da­tion of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Sys­tem, etc. The HCF was es­tab­lished by Hajj Group Or­gan­is­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of Pak­istan (HOAP) in 2010. HOAP may place the HCF de­posits in any of na­tion­ally sched­uled Is­lamic banks.

The Min­istry has also de­vel­oped and launched an elec­tronic mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem with the tech­ni­cal sup­port of Pun­jab In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Board (PITB) for re­spond­ing to in­quiries, com­plaints, etc. The min­istry has de­vel­oped an­droid ap­pli­ca­tion named “Pak Hajj Moavin,” for com­plaint reg­is­tra­tion. A mo­bile SMS ser­vice has been de­vel­oped for in­for­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion.

The sys­tem has an in-built mech­a­nism of trans­fer­ring the un re­solved com­plaint to the next tier of man­age­ment for tak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures. The min­istry in­tends to strengthen mon­i­tor­ing and su­per­vi­sion mech­a­nism for Hajj op­er­a­tion in Pak­istan and King­dom of Saudi Ara­bia to check/re­view the per­for­mance of Gov­ern­ment and Pri­vate Scheme, in ac­cor­dance with the con­trac­tual obli­ga­tions and Saudi Taleemat.

In ad­di­tion, pro­forma based feed­back, in­tro­duced last year, will be ob­tained from pil­grims of both Gov­ern­ment and Pri­vate Hajj Schemes at the time of their re­turn to Pak­istan.—APP